Explaining Icelandic joy, Italian gloom

January 7, 2008|By Andrea Walker The Hartford Courant

Most Americans, if asked to imagine what it's like to live in Italy, would paint a picture of a hedonistic idyll. There's the beautiful scenery, the sumptuous wines, the cultural riches. But the Italians themselves are miserable these days, at least according to a recent New York Times story.

Their economy is struggling to keep pace with new technologies. Young people live with their parents well into their 30s because they can't find high-paying jobs or affordable housing. Most important, Italians have lost faith in their government, frustrated with seemingly endemic corruption and inefficiency. An Italian economist working with researchers at the University of Cambridge finds that, out of 15 Western European countries, Italians are the least happy.

None of this would surprise Eric Weiner, who spent a year traveling to the world's happiest countries (and one profoundly unhappy one, Moldova) for his book The Geography of Bliss (Twelve, $25.99).

Weiner wanted to understand what makes cheerful nations that way, and to see if he could use the lessons to change his own, admittedly "gloomy," outlook. Trust - in government and neighbors - is a key factor in determining how people rate their contentment, and in Italy now, few feel content.

Weiner's first stop was the World Database of Happiness in Rotterdam, run by Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven. Veenhoven pioneered the concept of happiness studies (or "subjective well being," as it's known in scientific parlance) in the '80s and '90s. His main research method was to ask people how happy they were. Weiner combed through his data and found unexpected results.

For instance, while all Nordic nations rank high, one consistently at the top is Iceland, a place where it is dark much of the year and harkarl, or rotten shark, is considered a delicacy. Why are the Icelanders so happy?

One reason, Weiner learned when he visited, is the country is small. The entire population is around 300,000, and in the capital, Reykjavik, you can walk just about anywhere in 10 minutes.

Smallness facilitates cooperation, because if one segment of the population suffers it's not long before everyone feels the effects. Smallness creates a sense of cohesion, because most everyone knows everyone else, through friends, family or co-workers. There's also a feeling, due to the geographic location, of being slightly off the world's radar. This fosters an atmosphere of independence and experimentation.

"Unlike New York or Shanghai," Weiner writes, "Reykjavik has no delusions of grandeur. It's a city that knows its place in the cosmos . . . and is comfortable with that." The capital teems with creative types - artists, musicians, designers - and people are encouraged to start over if they don't like their career or if they fail at something. Failure doesn't have a stigma in Iceland, a resident says.

The ability to modulate attitudes, to shrug off suffering and float in a zone between misery and euphoria, is something that recurs in all of the happy places Weiner visits. It's part of the Swiss attitude toward efficiency and, they say of themselves, boredom. It's part of the Thai concept of mai pen lai, or never-mind-about-it; let it go. It's a key component of meditation exercises he does at an Indian ashram.

The absence of this mind-set dominates Moldova, the former Soviet republic Weiner visits as a point of comparison. Moldovans appear stuck in a posture of "learned hopelessness," a way of thinking that suggests things will never improve. (In their defense, the Moldovans lack a coherent national identity, a functioning economy and a culture that rewards altruism and hard work.)

It turns out there is a baseline for wealth that countries must meet before more abstract goals like happiness can be contemplated, but it's surprisingly low, and countries that have unfathomable wealth per capita, such as Qatar, are not demonstrably the better for it.

The book is full of such discoveries, and Weiner shows a remarkable capacity for translating analytic data into real-world insights. When Swiss love of nature is cited as a reason for that country's happiness, Weiner refers to a study showing hospital patients recovered faster if given a room with an outdoor view.

He proves a knowledgeable tour guide about radically dissimilar places and, despite calling himself a "grump," a very funny companion.